Currently, in order to produce chemicals, chemical fuel resources such as petroleum are mainly consumed in large amounts. That is, carbon is currently released from the earth to the atmosphere unilaterally in today's society. Therefore, the problems of global warming, depletion of fossil fuel resources, and the like have been caused, and in response to such problems, there has been recently demanded for building of a sustainable society by utilizing so-called biomass (plant-based resources such as cellulose, glucose and vegetable oil) in which carbon is reused and recycled with the help of plant photosynthesis.
In order to realize such a sustainable society described above, it is important to establish a technique for producing useful chemicals from biomass. As such a technique which has been already put in practical use, for example, a technique for producing ethanol by microbial fermentation is known which involves using glucose as a raw material. Ethanol thus obtained is called bioethanol, and is widely utilized as fuel for automobiles and the like. In addition, chemicals produced from a C2 fraction obtained hitherto by naphtha cracking have been recently started to be replaced with chemicals produced from biomass, and for example, it has been possible to produce polyethylene from ethylene obtained by dehydration of bioethanol, and also to produce propylene from ethylene produced from bioethanol.
As other examples, a technique for producing biodiesel fuel from vegetable oil such as palm oil is also put in practical use. Furthermore, a possibility is also studied that glycerol as a by-product in production of the biodiesel fuel is used as a basic chemical raw material for producing a compound including 3 carbon atoms (C3 compound; for example, propylene, 1,2-propane diol, or 1,3-propane diol) (see, for example, Non Patent Literature 1).